credits

“Always Whatever” is comprised of songs from various 7”s we have released in the past, as well as a few unreleased tracks. The following is the makeup of the record.

“Always Whatever” and “Derek Shelton Birthday Party”
- Unreleased
- Recorded and mixed by Robert Cheeseman
- Additional back up vocals by Adrienne Brown and Jake Cunningham

“Assailant” and “Dan Worships the Devil”
- Originally released on a split 7” with Tatlins Tower
- Recorded by Dan ABH, mixed by Mike Bardzik.
- Kiss of Death Records
- Additional back up vocals by Mike Bardzik

“Shelter Girl” and “Drag Me to the Core”
- Original released on the Art of the Underground single series.
- Recorded and mixed by Robert Cheeseman
- Art of the Underground Records
- Additional guitar played by Tyler Walker

“Viking Funeral” and “Mosby Street”
- Originally released on a split 7” with Caves
- Recorded and mixed by Robert Cheeseman
- Kiss of Death Records
- Additional guitar played by Tyler Walker

“Holy Monophony” and “Little Lights”
- Originally released as a digital single, no physical version.
- Recorded and mixed by Mike Natoli, Jonathan Hernandez, and Dan ABH
- Additional back up vocals by Tyler Walker

“Snowballs at Cops” and “Fire Escape”
- Originally released on a split 7” with Spraynard
- B-sides from “Never Settle”
- Recorded and mixed by Dan ABH
- Evil Weevil Records

“It Stands a Ground”, “Hidden Books” and “Christmas Day”
- Originally released on a demo CDR called “First 6 Songs”
- Recorded by Lance Koehler and Steven Birch, mixed by Chris Compton

All songs remastered by Bill Henderson at Azimuth studios.
Artwork by Bob Vielma

contact / help

Show me how to write well,
My mechanics are less than true.
My signature is worthless,
A hurried reminder of rushing through.
Just as I commonly do.
Oh, how I common do,
Like it’s all that I’m meant to.
But I know you make the same mistake,
Forgetting how to cross out plans you make.

I wish I couldn’t relate.
Twenty-two years I scribbled through,
Hurrying lines I never knew the right way to construe.
So maybe if we slow down the same,
Take off some time to rearrange,
We’ll meet up on the way.
Cause I know you make the same mistake.

Track Name: Derek Shelton Birthday Party

Derek Shelton Birthday Party (H. Mendell)

Cut your hair off about a year ago.
Now you’re turning 25.
Your loving family is down in Roanoke
And your shitty friends will soon arrive.
But you can have your hair back,
We’ll listen to metal.
This Is Your Life
Never Settle.
‘Cause it’s all about you.
All you wanna do, it’s all up to you.
Eyes are burning in a greenish room,
Someone accidently maced everybody in the living room
And our Canadian friend feels disgraced.
Legend keg of Legend, Legend keg, keg of legend.

Track Name: Assailant

ASSAILANT (H. Mendell)

I saw you again at the edge of the stage in a crowd, maybe twenty or so,
Matching the voice of the singer ahead like you knew every word in her throat.
Does the she know the hate that’s in those nights you let go?
When all of the cowardice in your spine is shown?
Secret assailant, you’d pass as a friend of the kids that I’ve given my heart,
And it scares the shit out of me you’re attending the same shows that keep us apart.
It rips out a faith that I held dear from the start.
What could have drawn assailants here?
I don’t want to think about it, don’t want the answer coming home.
I don’t want to think about it.

Track Name: Dan Worships The Devil

Dan Worships the Devil (C. Chubb)

This is Hell. You wanna go to Heaven, rumors to dispel.
I just can’t wait. How many creatures should we mutilate?
Before the night is through, we’ll make a deal with you.
Just wait for that setting sun, come on everyone,
Lets get fucking dim, convince them that we’re Satanists.
When the damage is done it will have been all in good fun.
It doesn’t matter anyway, we'll all have Hell to pay. Yeah!
There is no god.
You wanna be a martyr? I’m begging you to nod.
All things good and nice, how many virgins should we sacrifice?
It doesn’t matter anyway.
All in a day’s work for the horrified look on your face.
Oh Lucifer, they’re a little more afraid than they already were.

Track Name: Shelter Girl

Shelter Girl (H. Mendell)

Shelter baby stay in your house for two,
Turtle up and avoid that Richmond blue
Weather winter in white that don’t consume
It makes a nice night.
Would you rather be drinking out for two?
So shut the door and close the lock,
Tap your hand right with the tick-tock clock
That your father made you buy.
I can see exactly why
You’re always too late.
Make it seem a mistake.
You wanted to go out this time,
Ain’t that right?
If you wanted to go out this time you gotta say what’s on your mind.

Shelter girl, be my friend. I understand that it will end,
But I can’t hear another joke I’ve already told them.
I can’t hear my friends repeat them to me.

Track Name: Drag Me To The Core

Drag Me to the Core (H. Mendell)

Dead weight, drag me to the the core
Through the sediment underneath the floor.
Pull my body through the stone.
May it strip my muscle from the bone.
May it crush the momentum I seek.
May it leave my conscience weak.
May it churn through the words I would speak.
May it leave any doubt in defeat.
In the stone we will flow,
In the heat we will slow,
In the core we’ll be all that we know.
Where my body will rest hand in hand with its fate.
Warm in the core I feel nothing but weight.
The pressure of earth couldn’t make true the love
I promised to find when I never felt enough.
In the core we’ll be all that we know,
Between your love and how I couldn’t say no.

Track Name: Viking Funeral

Viking Funeral (H. Mendell)

Your flooded room brought you from D.C.
To stutter fiction driven stories,
Not of the actors you paid,
Not of the girls that you swayed,
Not of the years spent afraid,
More of magic made.
There’s gonna be some awkward questions,
The stuff our family never mentioned.
We talked about it at your Viking funeral.
Drew the lines between the names we know
We’ll hear in every Dublin pub, referencing you.
Fake lives you left true.

Track Name: Mosby Street

Mosby Street (H. Mendell)

They built a median on Mosby Street.
They built a pub where the locals meet.
They figure revenues in the feet and mouths
That hang down on John Mosby.
Though the church yard has stayed the same since you were seven.
They got a new shepherd to lead ‘em all to heaven.
Robert quit the job, got married, and left no trace.
There’s no one left to remember your face.
They’re still shopping at the corner store that sold you soda.
The library was torn up. Your friends have gotten older.
Home was rented out by a family that don’t know the place.
There’s no one left to remember the way you played at your house behind the wood--
A fortress made of limbs from a tree that stood
A thousand feet over the neighborhood.
You don’t visit like you should since you found that well empty.
They built a median on Mosby Street.

Track Name: Holy Monophony

Holy Monophony (H. Mendell)

Tell me that it hurts. tell me you never sleep.
The light is moving wrong, it lets the shadows creep.
Tell me about your voice. Tell me it’s never heard.
It’s grating on the nerves
Of these friends who love you none,
Opinionated sons of pack hospitality.
Holy monophony.
I’d love to hear the words that brought the guilt you feel.
Subjugating verbs, emotional appeal.
Progressively enough, further enticing your
Search for something more.
Again, it’s getting stuck in my head again.

Track Name: Little Lights

Little Lights (C. Chubb)

Hey, little lights, shine on.
Let us know just how low we are
And how far gone.
Cause sometimes I just don’t know how to feel,
It’d be easy if only life had a dashboard and a steering wheel.
Moving forward’s a risk but we take it now
We say, “To Hell with all of this.”
If we knock on wood we might barely make it out
Alive and well.
Hey, little lights, shine on.
Let us know how low we are and how far gone,
And we just won’t tell Dos about the little problems we tend to have on the road.
Alive and well, we live to tell.
These are some of our little secrets
We didn’t want you to worry, forget it.

Track Name: Snowballs At Cops

Snowballs at Cops (C. Chubb)

We were sitting in Carytown B&F.
We worried in a flurry of panicked thoughts
As the flakes made their way to the ground.
Will you be making your way to New York?
I'm not so sure about your flight.
The city’s gonna stop.
I wanna get drunk, go sledding, build a fire, throw a snowball at a cop. ALRIGHT!

But it only ever snows on the weekends...

See, we’re all in a frenzy to find that special place.
Do you have it in mind? Are you staying in Richmond?
Or are you leaving? By tomorrow there will be no way out.

But where will I strand myself? I don’t know.
Can this van make it to DC?
I grab my keys off the shelf.
See, I've got a very sick friend. I need to (need to need to) get up there,
But six inches of solid ice is bringing me down.
It doesn't seem fair.

Sometimes, you gotta break the ice. They’re living on giving me bad advice.

Track Name: Fire Escape

Fire Escape (C. Chubb)

I’m doing everything I can
To keep from ending me and you.
I'm doing everything I can, don't bother begging,
It won't keep me from reaching for the fan.

You say its none of my concern, but that ain't true.
I'm concerned and I'm feeling blue.
But I'll be alright,
They go to Hell tonight.

I'm feeling red,
I'm feeling great up in my head,
And I think that they'd all be better off dead.

In case of fire I might return,
And if I do, I'll make sure everyone burns but you.

I'm feeling oh so fine, I'll be alright.
I'll take the fire escape.

Track Name: It Stands a Ground

It Stands A Ground (H. Mendell)

There’s not much I remember of five years past September.
I know I did my best to sever any chance of memory.
I’d like to say I didn’t, that I was honestly committed
To a clean and separated life of work and honesty,
But I called up my friends to buy me drugs when I was young--
How these memories protect me from remembering anyone.
I woke up to your arms carrying me across the farm’s
Lengthy driveway paved with stone
To the ashes of your home.
You said it stands a ground, but I saw it burning down.

Track Name: Hidden Books

Hidden Books (H. Mendell)

If I was a Leo, this would be so perfect.
But I’ve got these bullhorns and they always fit.
If I was a Cancer, I would be my best friend.
Don’t you know you're one of them?
If I was an author, I’d write a book in space.
I mean in the context, not in my working place.
But if I was published, we’d all be in the stars.
We’d be constellations sharing our common parts.
Like the books under my coat
That Douglas Adams wrote,
I won't read you for a while, but you’ve always made me smile.
Hidden beneath me under a pile of clothes,
I’m missing the planets that I had grown to know.
But if I could find you I wouldn’t know where to start.
If you’re not what I remembered your pages could break my heart.
With two heads connected, your memory escapes me.

Track Name: Christmas Day

Christmas Day (H. Mendell)

A Middle Eastern fairy tale,
A memory you can't dismiss,
the faces of your children pale,
climatic thrills in every twist.
From hostage weeks in warring clans
in film that we might never see--
Delayed by your investors’ plans
Who only water money trees.
But now it’s time to pay the rent,
And balance with the weight of loans,
Tell your wife the credits spent,
And tangle up the telephone
While browsing via dial-up for
Producers you could never pay.
Hope to fill just half the cup and
Tell your kids by Christmas Day:
“The money’s on its way.”
I’ll imagine us in Hollywood,
On carpets we already knew
From where our favorite actors stood.
Parading in the living room:
Smile and wave to great applause,
Tell the world how much it means,
Crescendo with dramatic pause,
And bow the bow you bowed in your dreams.